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I’m tempted to look for the stains of Lavinia’s tears of laughter all over the dress as she sewed this bullshit.
“I thought for sure I’d look like a cupcake,” I tell her, trying to catch her eyes. “Now, I almost wish I could say that I looked like a cupcake. You know that white stuff that spills out of a heroin addict’s mouth when they’re overdosing? That’s what I look like.”
However . . . “They don’t go with the dress,” I tell her. But I’m hardly surprised she’s so bad at this, given the shit she wears. I reach around my back, trying to untie the corset. “You’re right,” she says. “You need a new dress now.” I almost snort. Well, we agree on that.
“Because ladies in your world don’t talk about those things.” A smile curls the corner of her mouth as she inches in, whispering, “You just go home in tears and do things with a pulsating showerhead that God didn’t intend for sweet, little southern girls to do, right?”
“Try it tonight,” she says, staring at my mouth. “You might like it.”
“Hallmark Christmas movie heroines aren’t your type.” “Everyone is my type when they’re naked.”
I cock an eyebrow. “Cereal was invented because John Harvey Kellogg believed Corn Flakes would stop Americans from sinning and masturbating.”
Why is she staring? Strands of loose blond hair bounce against her face, her skin glowing with a light layer of sweat, and for a moment, I can’t move. For a moment, she’s beautiful.
As long as they’re around, I can typically have a drink or two, but the quick plummet from “I feel fantastic and love everyone” to “Oh my God, what have I done?” and wasting a whole day recovering from a hangover was a lesson I only needed to learn once. Ever since, I drink sparingly and almost never hard liquor.
We sit outside, the sea breeze beyond the swamp blowing through the cypresses and tupelos, the scent of the moss stinging my nostrils, but quickly calmed by the sand and salt following it.
In no time, the newspaper covering the table is littered with decapitated crawdads, and I laugh as Army shows his son how to peel a shell.
I’m consumed. This is what it feels like. This is what right feels like. It was always wrong before. Kissing someone. Letting them touch me. I never had that burn low in my belly. I was never hungry. Until her.
I walk away, looking back at the bouquet, a flutter in my chest. Everyone likes flowers. Even girls in motorcycle jackets.
“She’s finishing the school year from home,” Coach announces. My stomach drops. “What?” Like hell. But Coach just looks at me, replying calmly, “Well, what did you expect, Clay?”
“I don’t hate you.” Her murmur is barely audible. I look up, listening. “I think about you all the time,” she almost mouths.
“I’ll share a bed with you,” Krisjen says. And I shake my head, surging to my feet. “Eat me,” I say. “I don’t need any favors.”
But as I pull out of the lot, take a left, and see her form walking in the downpour, I know I’ve fucked up. I lighten my foot on the pedal, seeing her drenched already, and wanting to stop so badly. I told her I would be there. But I don’t stop. I pass, leaving her behind in my rearview mirror, closing my eyes and wanting to cry. I can’t, Liv. I’m sorry. This isn’t a relationship. In the fall, she’ll go to one school and I’ll go to another. She’ll get over it.
I lie my head back, enjoying it while I can. I’ll miss this weather. I hate the cold, and while North Carolina isn’t the North, it’s north. Florida is south, but it’s not the South in the same way other states are. It’s Miami and Cuban sandwiches. Music and history. Explorers and conquerors. Tacky-ass mailboxes and flip-flops all year long. It’s how we’re vampires who love the night, because the sun’s not beating down on us. It’s the swamps—the mangroves, the shade and the hidden spaces underneath the Spanish moss, the tall birds with their long legs quiet and still in the calm waters . . .
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“You dance nice,” she says. She leans into the doorframe, pulling her gum out of her mouth and sticking it in a piece of foil. I steel my spine. “None of that was for you.” “All of that was for me.”
Whether it ends badly or it ends at all, I’m not sure I would do anything differently if I could. This feels too good to not have ever had it.
Liv looks over, meeting my eyes, and with a glance to my friends, she comes back to me and winks just covertly enough that only I notice. I can’t hide my smile as a blush crosses my cheeks. I feel right again.
“Clay . . .” She holds a book to her chest and gives me a placating smile. “I may have let my piece-of-shit ex-boyfriend get away with so much because I lack self-confidence and sometimes it was either him or home, and I didn’t want to go home,” she explains. “But it’s not because I’m a moron, so please, I’d rather you not explain at all than insult me with a lie.” My face falls. She pats my arm. “I’m here when you’re ready. See you in the gym.”
Ugh, great. She knows. She totally knows.
It never looks like me, the person in the mirror, the black script reads. She looks like everyone else. I look around, not seeing anyone else in the hall, except for a few loiterers down by the doors to the lunchroom. I keep reading. She’s like every woman on his arm—the same hair, the same clothes, the same smile, because to beat she has to compete, right? I stood in front of the mirror this morning, a mouthful of toothpaste and my hair tangled by your fingers. You sucked my lips swollen last night, and I can still smell your kisses on my skin. The world swims, how hard I’m used by you. How
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I need her. I need her skin on mine like I need food. More than I need food. I love Clay Collins. A text rolls in, and I click it, seeing it’s from her. As long as I look like yours.
I can’t breathe. Clay, I’m dying, I type. You’re killing me. Please stop. A text rolls in a moment later. Can you?
I’ll be done with my pasta by then, she assures me. Because it and me are having a total relationship without you right now.
“You’re going to stand up,” he says. I shake, a cry in my throat. “I can’t . . . stand up.” I gasp, fighting for air. “I can’t breathe.” He pulls my hands away, and I see him hover over me and take my face in his hands. “You’re going to stand up,” he tells me, “and you’re gonna do your homework, and you’re gonna go to prom.” My stomach twists into knots, and I shake my head. I can’t. “You’re going to be in the same room with her, Monday through Friday for the rest of the school year, and you’re not sacrificing yourself out of fear. You’re going to do all of this, Liv.” I cry harder, squeezing
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“Old world pepperoni,” he orders as he tucks my head into his neck. And faintly, I hear Trace’s grumble. “I hate old world pepperoni. It scratches the roof of my mouth.” But he leaves, following instructions, and after a moment, I let my arm circle my brother’s neck as he holds me until the pizza comes.
“Are you sure?” Krisjen’s voice is low. “You look like hangry, like you haven’t eaten in days and you’re going to morph into something outrageous if you don’t get to dine on an unbaptized baby soon.”
“So, uh . . . Army . . .” Krisjen starts. But I cut her off. “No.” “What?” What do you mean, what? I know what she wants. “I said no,” I state again. Army needs a woman badly, but I’m doing this as much for her as for him. He’ll just turn the poor girl into a babysitter he sleeps with. She groans as we dip into my room. “Fine.”
“I didn’t want you to know that you could break my heart.” Her brown eyes, behind beautiful smoky eye makeup, glisten. “I didn’t want Clay Collins to ever know that . . .” She pauses, the eyes and whispers around us, my family in the audience, and Wentworth’s booming voice onstage not nearly as loud as my heart. “That she has always broken my heart,” she tells me. “I love you.”
My chest swells. “I’ve only ever loved you.” Her breath warms me from head to toe, and I’ve never felt happier. “My heart is yours,” she says. “Shred it, burn it, I don’t care. I want every minute I can get.”
But that doesn’t mean he’s even nearly paid for what he did. Liv likes to give the impression she’s a fighter, and she is, but she’s not steel, and thanks to a lot of people, including me, she’s been abused long enough. I’m her armor now.
“I mean, you can stay, and we can get married since we’re eighteen, but then what?” I laugh, but then her words hit me, and I stop. It didn’t occur to me before she said it, but the words sound so right. I’m going to marry her. I see her chin tremble. “And if you come back . . .” But I press my finger over her lips. “I’m coming home.” And I take her face in my hands. “This doesn’t end.” “I love you,” she breathes out. And I kiss her, letting her feel my heart so she never doubts it. I’m going to marry her.
But I growl, pulling her phone—and whatever kinky sexual position she wants to try now—away as she giggles and I roll over on top of her. “Handful,” I grit out over her mouth right before I kiss her madly. “Hellion. Pain in my ass. Trouble.” “You’re never going to get rid of me, you keep talking sweet like that.” And I dive in, biting her neck and making her squeal.
